


in the distance, hear the laughter

by Cerusee



Series: sons of a certain father [3]
Category: Batman (Comics)
Genre: Gen, Guilt, Internalized Self-Loathing, content warning: suicidal ideation, sibling bonding of sorts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-19
Updated: 2019-03-19
Packaged: 2019-11-25 20:36:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18171161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cerusee/pseuds/Cerusee
Summary: Jason's not as okay as he thinks he is.





	in the distance, hear the laughter

**Author's Note:**

> This is set at least an academic semester, maybe two, after [Regrets (I've Had A Few)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18138539); Jason is at the hospital/wearing scrubs because he's started clinicals for nursing school (basically, it's hands-on experience under the supervision of an instructor).

He was sitting with his legs dangling off the roof when he heard the soft thump of a body landing, some meters back.

“Jesus _fuck_ , which one are you this time?” he said, pitching his voice low, just in case anybody else felt like getting some ‘air’ on Gotham Mercy’s roof.

She padded into view, and Jason almost wanted to cry.

“God—this just seems _mean_ ,” he said, staring at her. “Okay, who sent you, really?”

“No one sent me,” Cass said. “Dropped off a mugging victim. Went to leave. Saw you up here.”

“Oh,” Jason said. He almost laughed, but it died in his throat. “No, really, it’s perfect.”

Cass raised a cautious hand and poked Jason on the shoulder.

“You don’t understand,” Jason said, jerking away, and trying and failing to slap her hand. “I was _praying_. Like ‘please, God, send me the nicest angel you have—‘ and then there’s _you_.”

“You’re hurting,” she said. Cass actually sounded worried.

“Yeah, I fucking _know_ ,” Jason said, with his lips barely drawn back from his teeth. He took a deep breath in, and let it back out again. “I hear you’re good at picking up that kind of shit.”

She nodded. “I am.”

It was a hell of a skill, Jason thought, but earned at an almost unimaginable cost—what a rat bastard David Cain was. Jason had thought _he’d_ drawn the short straw on biological parents, until he’d finally gotten around to reading her file.

“Want to hear something sick?” he asked her, almost on a whim, but also very much not. “Something that’s just going to make you want to hurl?”

Cass tilted her head, warily.

“The first time I saw you, after I came back, I had this thought, like—‘Hey, we finally have something in common.’” 

The idea was so absurd now that it actually made him want to laugh. _As if you and I were ever anything alike._

“Maybe,” Cass said, slowly, looking Jason over. “Maybe we do. Now.”

“There’s no comparison,” Jason said, roughly, all humor vanishing, like bubbles popping in a bath gone cold. “You were a little kid. You had _no idea_ what you were doing. It was just that one time, and that was enough to change everything for you. _You’re_ a good person.”

“Robin was good,” Cass said, softly.

“I’m not Robin anymore,” Jason said. “I will _never_ be Robin again. Not just because there’s been a whole fucking _parade_ Robins after me, but because _I_ changed, and not for the better. The kid I was—I can never have that back. _Never_.”

“Trying now,” Cass said stubbornly.

“Sometimes, I think coming back was a mistake,” Jason said, staring across the stretch between the hospital literally beneath his dangling feet, and the tenements across the way. “This seemed...so much simpler when I was way the hell away from this shithole city.”

Cass made a disapproving noise.

“It _is_ a shithole, Cass. I was born and raised here, I would know. I get to say it. It’s a shithole, but it’s also...it was my _home_. There’s a memory around every corner.” _Usually bad. Usually bad things._

She only shrugged, as if to say _I’ve seen worse_. She stayed where she was, making no move to leave.

Cass was a great person to sit with in silence and brood, as it turned out. After several minutes, Jason said, haltingly, “I’ve been...remembering more things, lately. Stuff I’d just completely blanked out on.” _More bad things._

From the way she looked at him, he knew she didn’t need him to say that out loud.

Sometimes it was the details of things he’d seen being done. More often than not, the gruesome lost moment was the memory of something _he’d_ done. _All the perfumes of Arabia_ , he thought darkly. _I hear you, Lady M._

He had to face it; his hands were never going to be clean, no matter what he did. It was a joke to think he could ever come back from what he’d done, what he’d _been_. He’d put on tough face with Dick when he’d told him _I’m the one who has to live with it, not you_ , but as much as anything else, it was because he couldn’t stand the thought of having to justify or explain _any_ of his choices, even this one, in the face of Dick’s self-righteousness. Easy, to stand in judgment, when you’d never done a damn thing wrong in your life. That was why some little part of him had looked at Cass, and felt kinship, for the first time, felt _maybe she can understand what this is like_. Until he realized how idiotic that was, because Cass was so purely _good_. 

Cass was the best of them all. 

_I’m the one who has to live with it, not you._

And then, he thought, _I_ don’t _have to._

He leaned forward, imagining the drop. Would it actually be high enough, or…? A hospital roof seemed like a bad place to try it from, if you had a particular goal in mind. 

_I don’t_ have _to live with it._

Much later, Jason was able to admit that he wasn’t _entirely_ sure what would have happened in the next three minutes or so, if it had been anyone else sitting next to him. But it had been Cass, which meant there was only one possible outcome.

It was only a thought, not a plan. He’d only imagined it, that was all. 

But whatever Cass read in Jason’s body language right at that moment made her inhale sharply, and even as his head swung around to look at her face, to see her widening eyes, she’d seized him by the collar of the jacket he’d put over his scrubs to ward against the chilly night air, and thrown him bodily away from the edge of the roof. He landed with a _whoof_ , and before he could get his breath back, Black Bat was on him, slapping him hard across the face. 

“ _NO!_ ” she snapped, as if he was a ill-behaved terrier. “ _No!_ No, no, _no!_ ” She was still wearing her gauntlets, and the blow _hurt_. It had been a while since Jason had been hit anywhere, much less the face. Cass’s eyes were still huge, and he didn’t need any nigh-supernatural senses to read the panic there.

Cass sat astride his chest, pinning his arms with her knees, while she pulled a phone from her belt, and texted something furiously. It had to have been less than a minute before it _pinged_ , and Cass stabbed a button and held it up to her ear. “Come now,” she said, briskly. “I won’t leave him.”

“What was that,” Jason said, dread curdling in his gut.

“Him,” Cass said simply.

“Cass, _no!_ ” Shit, shit, _shit_. “Cass, let me up.”

“ _No_ ,” she said. “Promised him.”

“Cass, you don’t understand. It’s bad enough that he thought it before—you can’t go around _scaring_ him like that.” He felt like her panic was leaching down through her, into his own chest. “Whatever you thought you saw, I’m _fine_. You didn’t need to do that!”

“ _Promised him_ ,” Cass said, harshly, and she reached down to prod sharply at his aching face. “Listen. _I_ can see. _You_...aren’t safe. Won’t leave you alone. Promised him.”

Jason gave up, then, and stopped even trying to fight. He turned his head, so he didn’t have to look at her fierce, frightened face anymore, and stared off into the distant, smoggy Gotham sky.

It could have been five minutes, or it could have been an hour, before Jason felt Cass roll off him. As Jason slowly pulled himself upright, he looked over to see Batman himself crawling over the edge of the rooftop. 

Jesus Christ, the look on his face.

“I didn’t do anything,” he said quietly, as Bruce dropped to his knees next to him, and pulled Jason into his arms. “I didn’t try anything, _I swear._ ”

Bruce rubbed slow circles into his back, and rested his chin in Jason’s hair. “I believe you,” he said.

“It’s just,” and Jason’s voice cracked. He clenched his eyes shut, and hot tears slid out. “It’s just been a really shitty few weeks, Dad. You know? It’s just been _really hard_.”

He cried while he listened to Bruce say all the good things, the ones he needed, the _it’s going to be okay_ s and the _we’ll figure it out_ s, and when he finally opened his eyes again, Black Bat was gone.

***

He came out of sleep, many hours later, with a dream still dragging at him. It wasn’t a nightmare, thank God, but whatever it was left him feeling deeply unsettled. 

The lingering sleepiness and the remnants of the dream vanished in a flash second when he realized she was sitting in his open window, watching him.

The training that would never truly leave him reminded him that there were _three_ patterns of breathing in this room, and only one of them was his own.

He cast an eye about the room. And oh, there was the third—Bruce, passed out in an armchair. It had been a long night.

“You have to live,” Cass said, very quietly, gazing at him from the window.

“I _know_ ,” Jason whispered. “I know. I can’t hurt him again.”

“No,” Cass said, shaking her head in all directions, and then flashing teeth at him in sheer frustration. “ _You_. Have to live. If you want to be _better_.” She pointed at Bruce, sprawled in the armchair. “He taught me that.”

“He did?” Jason croaked out.

Cass nodded decisively. “Took time. Don’t know if he... _used_ to know it. But yes. Now, we all know it. You need to.”

“Guess it’s worth a shot,” Jason said, to the ceiling. “Beats the alternative. I ought to know.”

Cass hissed, from across the room. “I save everyone.” She glared at him. “Don’t have to _like_ everyone I save.”

 _Fair enough_ , Jason thought. Not everybody enjoyed black humor. “I’m going to live long enough for you to like me,” he told her. “Just for spite.” 

“Mmm,” Cass said, and this time the baring of teeth was an actual smile. “Maybe...we both will.”

**Author's Note:**

> My aesthetic is Batdad hugging crying Batkids on rooftops.


End file.
